Mists of Pandaria: Challenge Mode Dungeons
We will hear more about Mists of Pandaria in the upcoming weeks, but while we are waiting for new announcements we can review the new Challenge Mode dungeons that are coming in Mists of Pandaria.

Heroic mode dungeons will not be as difficult as they were in Cataclysm, instead they will be similar to the Wrath of the Lich King level difficulty.

Challenge Mode dungeons will require you to complete a dungeon in a certain amount of time to win a medal and other rewards, similar to the Zul'Aman timed run for the bear mount.

There are Bronze, Silver, Gold medals that will be earned based on the amount of time taken to complete the dungeon.

You gear levels are normalized by reducing your overall item level to a set level so that everyone is on equal gear footing.

There will be no way to get better gear and just overpower the challenge.

Completing the Challenge on gold will incur a stacking debuff on future attempts: it’ll start with a 5% debuff, but if you manage to finish with a gold medal time on that run you’ll receive a 10% debuff on your next run, and so on.

The challenges will reward unique gear for transmogrification and valor points.

Other possible rewards include pets, mounts, titles, and achievements depending on your score.

A new challenge dungeons UI will be added, allowing you to check your medals, ranking, show what rewards you can unlock, and more.

There will be realm wide leaderboards that allow you to compete with your friends, guild, or everyone!

Challenge Mode will work only on Pandaria dungeons at the beginning.

Challenge Mode dungeons will use the Dungeon Finder tool.

It is possible that the system could be expanded to raids in the future.

Class Transmogrification List
With the popularity of our previous weapon transmogrification list, we have expanded the list to more slots for each class. Because these lists are so long and take some time to prepare, the lists will be split into groups of a few classes at a time. Today we finish with Shaman and Hunters. If you would like to see other transmogrification data, let us know in the comments.

This time around items that share the same model and color are counted together in the rankings as often as possible, but not items that have different color variations of the same model.

All of the items in the list have screenshots on the database page if you are looking for some transmogrification ideas!

Every time I would see someone in Dalaran with the Lich King title, or rocking a weapon from normal firelands it would eat me alive.

Im very big on earning the best things in everything we do.

Epic gear isnt epic anymore. I wish they would make the normal mode raids drop blues because thats the level of content they are.

I miss BC when I would rock my Staff of Immaculate recovery and my Tier 6 before sunwell dropped and having ppl oogle me. Im not narcissistic, vain or conceded its just.. whats the point of making the playoffs if everyone gets a stanley cup at the end.

I think that RAID FINDER gear should be "blue"(superior), Normal should remain epic.

Weeee...MMO Champion posters deliver once more...First two pages already full of complaints.

Looking forward to those dungeon challenges. Something for all those "TBC was soooooo great" types. It is a variation on the "You did SH on heroic, now do it in a 45 minutes timelimit" (also applies to Strat in Classic)

Thats half of it. The other reason is that the players who actually like challenging stuff spend half their time moaning about how random PuGs are all stupid and dumb people who can't move out of fire. Obviously to make the experience more pleasant for both kinds of people, it has to be easy enough so random PuGs dont constantly cause wipes and slow down the rest of the group, and so they actually can enjoy themselves. Both skilled and unskilled people should have a more pleasant time doing random PuGs.

And the challenge modes are to compensate for the low difficulty. To give experienced and skilled players something to do. Not to mention the unique mogging gear rewards. You know how people always say "every one looks the same, I remember the days when full tier sets were rare!" Well the few people who manage to do perfect runs through challenge modes will be able to be special snowflakes and rare occurrences that will cause onlookers to gaze upon them and be impressed by their rare gear.

But then you read;

Challenge Mode dungeons will use the Dungeon Finder tool.

I don't really care one way or another, but I think we will still have the same amount of qq in the forums about this.

I just came back to WoW after a short break, and have been running the new 5 mans. If that is the level of difficulty in Mists, then it might be a good compromise. I can still heal stupid, finish my run and get my satchel of useless goods without having my blood pressure go nuts. Now, LFR on the other hand I find stupidly to easy. Even if I can't heal stupid, we generally succeed with no real problem. I've seen both tanks go down and still succeeded. Now that's a head scratcher.

You clearly never watched a skilled hunter chain-trapping AND kiting mobs (during the same pull), while helping a Protection warrior tank the Shattered Halls on heroic. Even in Cataclysm, I watched a warlock keep up a cycle of Banish, Curse of Exhaustion and Fear in a Stonecore pull thanks to a crappy healer.

Alas, crowd control is another casualty of LFD/LFR and people that totally refuse to learn how the game is played.

Weeee...MMO Champion posters deliver once more...First two pages already full of complaints.

Looking forward to those dungeon challenges. Something for all those "TBC was soooooo great" types. It is a variation on the "You did SH on heroic, now do it in a 45 minutes timelimit" (also applies to Strat in Classic)

How typically clueless of you, det; ignorant of both the cause, and the effect. Blinded by Blizzard love.

Shattered Halls and Stratholme were challenging instances in their time, a time where your tank couldn't pick everything up and let ingrates zerg everything down. Thunderclap was warrior AoE, and it wasn't even available in Defensive Stance.

Not anymore. When they pulled the whole pack and you needed to CC five out of seven mobs and AoE would break them and each one of those mobs would one shot a cloth user and two shot a tank it was different. At least harder than spamming your AoE.

Please, TBC was the pinnacle and unfortunately for people that enjoy a good challenge, those days are long gone. Now, here comes MoP and since only casuals can devote 3 minutes a week to the game, people will be mailed 1 epic a week so they don't miss out.

I laughed so hard since it´s true =) Deathwing isn´t the destroyer of worlds, Blizzard is!

i actually like this new idea of blizzard is heading, even tho not all are challanging you can still try getting auchivment and harder pulls. if you dont like the game Unsub. blizzard isnt holding you by the gun -.-challenging dungeon and Pokemon look alike pet battle sounds fun so am looking forward to MOP.

Weeee...MMO Champion posters deliver once more...First two pages already full of complaints.

Looking forward to those dungeon challenges. Something for all those "TBC was soooooo great" types. It is a variation on the "You did SH on heroic, now do it in a 45 minutes timelimit" (also applies to Strat in Classic)

I don't understand why you keep replying. All you say at every thread, that you don't like, that everyone is complaining. Go play the game if you like it so much instead of trolling the forums. I think 2000 posts is already too much but your 8700 posts is really over the top.

Why on Pantheons torn Azeroth would they call it a heroic when it's not even near close to heroic?

A real heroic was in the Burning Crusade when stuff actually took skill and thought to beat. Not this crap that you zip through while alt tabbing a browsing the web because it's piss easy.

why on azeroth would a raiider want to spend atleast 2 hours in ONE trying to gear for raids thats what dosent mak sence

---------- Post added 2012-01-16 at 02:38 PM ----------

Originally Posted by melodramocracy

And then complaining the rest of the week that there's nothing to do? As a raider, you should probably be asking for harder 5 mans, with loot that ties in with raids a bit better.

ive never once complained that theres nothing to do i got 4 chars that i spread out to lvl and gear i got pvp and if it impelmented the pet battles also and if im done all of that by tuesday i have tv my 3ds and my wii

Completing the Challenge on gold will incur a stacking debuff on future attempts: it’ll start with a 5% debuff, but if you manage to finish with a gold medal time on that run you’ll receive a 10% debuff on your next run, and so on.

Should be a 1% debuff, everlasting for achieving gold. 5% seems far too much only to maintain a level of challenge in that particular heroic dj. As I can foresee this would be your personal proudness : "Hey look I got 14% of debuff because without it I would BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN (with the lemons)"

I can´t recall a 3 hours HC run either Not even in TBC !! Longest was prolly Shattered Halls at lvl 70 or something.

I remember 2 hour HC pug run with around 20 wipes. I also remember that at start of Cata pug finished Stonecore every 5th group with ppl often leaving as soon as they realized it's Stonecore. Pugs are of limited performance capability.

Imho gearing != having fun in the game. I can having fun in multiple things, even farming while talking with guildies in TS about random s!*t. Gearing should be affordable to everyone, especially in heroics if they need/want to be prepared for raids. It doesn't need to require much time. I'm not totally convinced about this feature, but it seems a good compromise between giving something challenging to hardcores and making the gearing process available to everyone. Just hope that gold medals rewards are very cool pets and nice transmogrify armor P.S: for everyone saying "but i won't do the same istance over and over", i respond "but you are doing LFR over and over to get gear for you char"; also, you don't need at all Challenge modes gear, since it's all vanity gear

Not looking forward to this. It's just gonna be another feature most people won't give two craps about, because all the Challenge mode rewards are purely for bragging rights/vanity. Like achievements...which most people also don't give two craps about.So yeah. This feature will hardly even be used, yet people are still complaining about it for some reason.